ISTANBUL, Turkey — Ayse sits at her desk, a black-and-white patterned hijab wrapped loosely around her head and her white pharmacist’s coat drawn modestly to her chest. She’s heard what is happening across town, about the tear-gas trails and plastic bullets, the injured and, now, the dead.
“The protesters believe the government here is a dictatorship,” she says. “But Turkey is not like Saudi Arabia: We have democracy here, and many different kinds of people. Fine, if you want to protest, then protest; if you want to drink alcohol, then drink alcohol — the government has not banned it.”
In Istanbul’s Fatih district — its mosques’ minarets piercing the sky — support for the conservative Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and its besieged leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, runs strong.
A sense of calm pervades the winding back streets of the district, perched on a series of hills beside the waters of the Golden Horn, the fabled inlet of the Bosphorus strait that divides Istanbul.
Barbers’ scissors snip rapid-fire along hairlines. Street-side shoe polishers’ brushes scrape against leather, while women buzz around mannequins adorned with abayas and hijabs of every shade and hue.
The violent clashes that have swept through Istanbul and much of the country, pitting antigovernment protesters against police, seem a universe away. But there is a fear that the protests may cross the Golden Horn.
“Maybe tomorrow that chaos will be outside my store. I don’t want that,” says Fateh, a shopkeeper, who, like others interviewed, asked that only his first name be used for privacy reasons. “I trust Erdogan. He fixed the economy and that’s why we vote for him every election.”
Clouds of sweetened tobacco smoke from water pipes waft down streets as men pass the day in coffee shops. Markets are packed with sacks of spice. Groups move along cobbled pavement drawn to prayer by the muezzins’ calls that reverberate along the streets.
While the cosmopolitan hodgepodge of protesters in central Taksim Square assail what they call Erdogan’s brazen unilateralism, increasingly steeled authoritarianism and Islamist leanings, many in the much more restrained Fatih district counter by rattling off his government’s achievements.
During Erdogan’s decade-long tenure as prime minister, Turkey’s economy grew rapidly, riding waves of foreign investment. Per-capita income nearly tripled. Large-scale building projects fed the economy. And Turkey became an increasingly important player on the global stage.
“Erdogan is No. 1,” says Abdullah, seated inside a bookstore, its shelves packed with Islamic literature, beside the sprawling Fetih mosque. “The economy is strong, tourists come from all over the world to visit Turkey…. These protesters number maybe 50,000 people. What is the population of Istanbul? 13 million. They have no support.”
Erdogan’s political movement, with strong Islamist shades, appeals to pious Muslims and has built a significant support base, garnering nearly 50% of the national vote in 2011’s general elections.
However, the disconnect between the party’s supporters and its detractors highlights deep fissures in Turkish society.
Turkey’s founding father, the revered Kemal Ataturk, engaged in an aggressive policy to infuse the nation with secular values, prescribing an identity for Turks. Now, liberals and secular-minded Turks, including members of minority groups such as the Alevis, argue that their identity is under threat by a creeping Islamization or, worse, social engineering.
Religious conservatives and traditionalists pushed back against the secular wave for many long years. While serving as mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan himself was imprisoned for reciting a poem that cut against the country’s enforced secularism.
The prime minister’s views resonate with many, especially in places such as Fatih.
Seated in her pharmacy Tuesday, Ayse — pleasant and good natured — smiles.
“This will all be over soon,” she says.